Ghosts of Galleries Past

by Jamie Bennett 

This is probably a good place to start posting. A very good place to start. I am working backwards here. It is actually February, 2014 and I am better able at this time to archive my exhibitions. Sadly, many photos have been lost over the years but I have been able to hold onto some of my favorites.

The photo to the left is Nia and myself at my first college gallery. We literally just started dating again and here we are enjoying a wonderful evening. This was taken at Desoto Row in Savannah, Ga.

On the right is a piece that you would have seen had you been fortunate enough to attend our exhibition. This wasn't my first gallery. I have been showing my art since I was just a wee lad and had already won some awards. This was, however, the first time that I didn't feel self conscious about what I had produced. It was a great show and my date to the event later became my wife. So you could say she was very impressed with me. I even sold some pieces.

In Savannah I showed my work a lot. There was probably a two year streak where I was constantly hanging somewhere. I showed multiple times at Desoto Row. I appeared in two senior shows, the Red Kite Gallery hosted a Circus themed event (photo left) and I had a series of shows at the Sentient Bean. One of those shows was to help finance a skateboard park. There was a live auction. I believe that show was called something like "Friends of Tybee Island". Everyone created their own skateboards.

I was eventually offered a semi-permanent gallery space at the Bookstore Lady's Bookstore on Liberty. I came in and filled the space with whatever I felt like and swapped things out as I saw fit. It was a pretty sweet deal.

I really enjoyed these exhibitions because I was just getting started as a professional and my aesthetic was still forming (not that it ever stopped). Everything seemed like it was fair game and I had yet to experience and artistic block. I was free to make anything and everything I made excited me.

In total I probably participated in a dozen galleries during the last two to three years of college. I had also began working as a designer professionally during this time.

I did not arbitrarily choose the date for this posting. October 1, 2007 is when I began working full time for Advertising and Marketing Solutions Inc. I think about my artistic development in terms of pre and post AMS Inc.